On this day — the Perry campaign deals with a rash of bad press about his debate performance and his answer about Merck’s political contributions to his campaign; Michele Bachmann comes under fire for claiming that the HPV vaccine has serious health risks; the president continues to campaign for his jobs plan and the Republicans win an upset in New York.

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Facts and Figures and Vaccinations

Any candidate that says “I raised about $30 million (for my campaign). And if you’re saying that I can be bought for $5,000, I’m offended” in response to an allegation of pay-for-play has to expect that reporters from across the country are going to go see just how much said contributor (say a drug company) has contributed to your gubernatorial campaigns and any other major political entity you’ve had a hand in running.

When said drug company has actually contributed $30,000 to your re-election campaigns and more than $350,000 to the Republican Governor’s Association, where you’ve been a key player for a decade — you’ll get a lot of uncomfortable questions pointed your way like “well, if $5,000 wasn’t enough to buy you, how about (give or take) $400,000?”

Toomey and Perry served together in the Texas House in the 1980s and have been linked ever since, from Perry’s personal finances to his public legacy.

…

When Perry angered doctors in 2001 by vetoing a measure meant to prompt insurers to more quickly pay doctors, there was speculation that Perry vetoed the bill, in part, as a favor to Toomey, who was a lobbyist retained by Texans for Lawsuit Reform and Cigna, a health maintenance organization.

Toomey called that “a crock” and said he had not talked to Perry about the measure.

Toomey stepped away from lobbying to become Perry’s chief of staff in 2002-04. When Toomey resigned as chief of staff, he went back to lobbying.

Toomey went with Perry on a controversial trip to the Bahamas in 2004 with large GOP donors, other staff, anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist and political adviser Dave Carney.

He now owns a private island in New Hampshire with Carney, who is Perry’s chief political consultant.

- Meanwhile, Michele Bachmann came under fire from doctors for misrepresenting the potential side effects of the HPV vaccine, with some going so far as to accuse her of fear-mongering.

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More Reaction to a Bad Debate

The fallout from Gov. Rick Perry’s debate performance has been threefold — political observers have questioned Perry’s preparedness for the debates, conservatives have questioned Perry’s positions on immigration and mandatory vaccinations and another round of questions about Social Security have raised more questions about Perry’s electibility in a general election.

But (Perry’s) answer on an executive order he signed requiring pre-teen girls to receive a vaccination preventing HPV was, to put it mildly, poor. He sounded defensive, stuck by his standard explanation, and uttered a sentence that he will probably regret when it shows up in an ad: “I raised $30 million and if you’re saying I can be bought for $5,000, I’m offended,” he said, referring to pay-to-play allegations about contributions from the drug company that manufactured the vaccine.

He reminded everyone of that last night when he was caught badly off guard on questions about his executive order on an HPV vaccine. He tried to clean up the mess with a line about $5,000 not being enough to bribe him. Um, not good. (Democratic outside groups have almost certainly already put that quote into a TV ad to be deployed if Perry is the nominee.) Perry’s stumbles last night are far from fatal and, lucky for him, he has three more debates between now and mid-October to get better. But, make no mistake: he needs to. Get better, that is.

Mitt Romney’s Democratic-style attacks on Rick Perry’s social security stance are a bit of a bank-shot. They’re not aimed at convincing Republican primary voters that he has unpalatable views. They’re aimed at convincing them he can’t win.

From PPP:

In fact it appears that Perry’s rhetoric on Social Security could already be causing him problems. When PPP did a national poll three weeks ago Barack Obama led Perry by only 6 points at 49-43. Now that gap has widened to 11 points at 52-41. The main movement has come with Democratic voters. On the previous poll Obama had only a 68 point lead with the party base at 81-13 but now it’s 80 points at 89-9. We know there are a lot of Democratic voters disenchanted with Obama right now but if the GOP puts forward someone like Perry who’s willing to go after one of the Holy Grails of the party’s orthodoxy like Social Security it might scare those voters back into the fold.

I’m starting to feel like I’m going to end-up needing a mulligan, but there still isn’t any polling that shows movement among Republican primary voters towards Romney… yet. As always, it’s important to remember that polling is nothing more than a snapshot in time. If there are more than a couple of polls that show Perry’s statements about Social Security turning off persuadable Democrats and independent voters, you could start to see general election electability become a bigger issue in the Republican competition.

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The Clips

- The Washington Post reports Solyndra solar panel plant bankruptcy is becoming a political headache for the White House, with emails showing that staff pressed the Office of Management and Budget on when approval for loan guarantees could be granted.

One e-mail from an OMB official referred to “the time pressure we are under to sign-off on Solyndra.” Another complained, “There isn’t time to negotiate.”

“We have ended up with a situation of having to do rushed approvals on a couple of occasions (and we are worried about Solyndra at the end of the week),” one official wrote. That Aug. 31, 2009, message, written by a senior OMB staffer and sent to Terrell P. McSweeny, Biden’s domestic policy adviser, concluded, “We would prefer to have sufficient time to do our due diligence reviews.”

White House officials said Tuesday that no one in the administration tried to influence the OMB decision on the loan. They stressed that the e-mails show only that the administration had a “quite active interest” in the timing of OMB’s decision.

- Nate Silver writes that the outcome in two special elections tonight could show that the pendulum hasn’t swung back to the Democrats and writes that it could be 2010 all over again … except for the fact that it really couldn’t be 2010 all over again because there aren’t many Democratic seats left that the Republicans could be expected to do well in.

- The Boston Globe reports that Perry skewered Romney while giving a speech about the economy in Massachusetts (and btw – that is one snazzy new website they’ve got.)

“When it comes to Social Security, every Republican candidate knows the current system is unsustainable, with an unfunded liability in the trillions of dollars,’’ said Perry, who did not mention Romney by name in the speech. “Other candidates in this race have used words like ‘fraud’ and compared it to a ‘criminal enterprise.’ But under the media spotlight, they change their tune and they start sounding like liberals.’’

Perry was fresh off a bruising debate in Florida Monday in which Romney again challenged him for referring to the retirement program as a failure. Perry struck back by contending Romney’s book had said the program would be considered criminal if it were in the private sector; Romney argued that the criminal reference was instead criticism of Congress for spending the Social Security surplus elsewhere.

Perry spoke last night at a dinner sponsored by the conservative Pioneer Institute at the Hyatt Regency. His 20-minute speech, which also touched on his job-creation record, received polite, but not enthusiastic, applause from the crowd of Republican lawyers, activists, and business executives.

What’s going on today: Perry will attend a convocation at the conservative Liberty University and then a lunchtime fundraiser with Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell.